Never Before
by EveLGW
Summary: Possible follow-up to 'Concequences' (GSR).


Title: Never Before (1/1)  
Author: Eve (little_grey_woman42@yahoo.de)  
Category: Let's make an educated guess ... uhm ... Angst?  
Keywords: GSR  
Rating: PG-13 (for some disturbing imagery)  
Spoilers: Up to PNN and maybe beyond (just to be safe).  
Author's notes: Might come after "Glass Caskets" and "Consequences".  
To avoid confusion - okay to avoid more confusion than necessary - those here " ' ' " indicate thoughts and those "**" indicate emphasis in the text of the story.  
  
  
  
Never Before  
by Eve  
  
  
Never before had Grissom noticed how slender her hands, how elegant her fingers were.   
  
He had watched them dust for fingerprints, lift evidence with tweezers, every movement efficient yet almost ... graceful. They skilfully danced over the evidence to their very own choreography mastered by her over the years, looking out for clues, for the answers to some of those questions that always surrounded the victims.  
  
They were slender yet strong hands, revealing sometimes more emotion than her features, which she used to mask with a forced smile so very often.   
  
Impatient hands, tapping on the smooth white surface of a counter when she was waiting for some lab results to be printed out.  
  
Nervous hands, tugging strands of silky brown hair behind her ears when they escaped one of her loose ponytails.  
  
Angry hands, gesticulating around, pointing accusingly at another smug suspect who believed he or she was about to get away without having to face the consequences for their crime.  
  
Frustrated hands, trying to make him understand something that was close to her heart, something he didn't seem to get even though he really tried to.  
  
Those were talking hands. Not talking like the hands of his mother, pronouncing each word with precision. No, Sara's hands spoke a language that only belonged to her, a language much more complicated than sign language and much more difficult to learn.  
  
Some time after she had entered his life again he started to study her, observed her movements, her gestures. And slowly but surely he began to understand. Her hands were talking, always talking and revealing what was on her mind, what she felt even though she tried to hide it. And then one day he suddenly saw it, realised what he had missed before.   
  
They were reaching out for him.  
  
For *him*.  
  
And when she touched him ... Gentle hands. So very gentle.  
  
Reassuring when she laid them on his arm, on his shoulder. Calming when they cupped his cheek with some silly excuse, not swiping away imaginary chalk but caressing his face instead.   
  
Always gentle.   
  
Words often failed both of them, but those deliberate violations of those boundaries, of those walls they used for protection and to hide themselves behind never did. Those precious moments were wonderful, liberating. Touching. But at the same time they were dangerous. For what would happen if he lowered those walls or tore them down like the three of them tore down the apartment walls that day? Could he let her in? Could he?  
  
Now it didn't matter any more. Because now her hands were silent.  
  
He wished he had grasped them tightly like he had wanted so many times before and never let them go again.  
  
They were still.  
  
He wished he had held them with his own. His hands were bigger than hers and he could have held both of her hands easily. He would have closed them around hers, cradled them between his palms. He would have held her safe.  
  
So very still.  
  
He opened the carton and pulled out the sharpened, sterilised stick. Making sure that he wouldn't miss anything he carefully lifted each finger of her left hand 'Her skin should feel cold, shouldn't it?' and scraped the space underneath her fingernails.  
  
'Not cold. Why isn't she cold?' He frowned in confusion. Then he looked down at his own fingers, noticing for the first time the bluish discoloration that had spread from his fingertips over the back of his hands. For a moment he wondered how long he'd been in there, how long it would be before the others would intrude in order to lead him out of the room, away from her.   
  
But then he simply stopped thinking about it. They would have to wait.  
  
He put the stick back into the box and slid it into the inside of his jacket, his eyes never leaving her small hand. He touched her for the last time when he took it gently, so very gently and tugged it back under the black plastic wrapping that covered the rest of her body.  
  
Black.  
  
Blackness. Suddenly he found himself surrounded by it. His frantically beating heart drowned out all other noises that filtered through the closed blinds of his bedroom windows as he gasped for breath.  
  
'Sara.'  
  
He blindly reached out for the phone next to his bed but missed it and knocked the whole thing down in the process. He bend over the edge of his bed and felt for it in the dark, grasped it tightly when his fingers came in contact with the cordless receiver. Dialling tone. '... not too late, it's not too ...' Speed dial. 'I can still tell her, show her what she ...' Ringing tone. '... please, please, please ...' The tone stopped. It clicked. Then:  
  
"Hello?"  
  
Silence.  
  
"Who is this?"  
  
Without uttering a single word he immediately disconnected the line, put the receiver back on the night stand. He fell back into the pillows and covered his face with his hands, pressed the balls of his thumbs hard against his eyes.  
  
And although he'd never heard that voice over a phone before he knew with sickening certainty whom it belonged to.   
  
Hank. 


End file.
